Contracting Automation Pioneer, Juro, Raises $2m Seed Funding

Juro, the UK-based contracting automation pioneer, has raised $2m in a seed funding round led by Point Nine Capital with contributions from Seedcamp and the founders of TransferWise, Gumtree and Indeed.

Juro is a multi-functional platform for contracting that uses machine learning and several data analysis and collaboration capabilities to allow lawyers and companies to contract easily and better manage deal flow. This in turn increases efficiency and also provides deeper legal data insight to users, as the platform is natively digital and allows the easy capture of insights into repeated contracting processes.

The funds will be used by Juro to build its team across its London and Riga offices and ‘double down on its machine learning infrastructure‘ it said. The company added: ‘Naturally, the round was agreed through Juro.’

The company was founded in 2016 by Richard Mabey (CEO), a former Freshfields corporate lawyer who worked with LegalZoom and Pavel Kovalevich (CPO), an ex-Accenture software engineer. Juro has seen rapid growth since formally launching in 2017 and now counts Estée Lauder, Deliveroo and Nested among its clients.

The company has stressed that its philosophy is based around improved design thinking in terms of contracting, using tech tools such as machine learning to make that process better for all involved.

Richard Mabey (CEO) and Pavel Kovalevich (CPO), Juro.

Juro’s Mabey said: ‘I’ve spent my whole career working with contracts in one way or another and always been bothered by the total lack of design thinking in the way contracts are agreed. Contracts should not be written by lawyers for lawyers – they should be engaging, useful and designed for the end user.’

Rodrigo Martinez, a partner at Berlin-based Point Nine Capital, added: ‘We’re making contract workflow faster, smarter but also more human. Since we first met Richard and Pavel, we have been very excited about their vision for a more human and design-centric approach to contracts. As a VC firm managing hundreds of contracts a year, we feel the pain of the current processes. We look forward to continuing to support them in upgrading legal processes.’

Meanwhile Paul Forster, a co-founder of job search site Indeed, added: ‘Juro’s pioneering approach to contracts is changing the way businesses interact. Contracts form the basis of many of our most important relationships and Juro’s design centric approach is making them unique, pleasant and even enjoyable – a radical improvement for legal teams. I’m delighted to be part of it.’

And, Artificial Lawyer has to add: congratulations! This site has watched Juro grow steadily and become one of the key start-ups in the Contracting Automation Tool (CAT) arena, along with Synergist and Avvoka. Readers looking to know more can check out this January 2017 feature on Juro here.

The company now hopes to become a key legal tech player in the $800bn global legal market and it would seem that it has everything to play for given the current frustrations with day to day contracting inside the world’s corporate legal teams.